Welcome To the home of those who love scripture

---

 Introduction:

Business Statements are the foundational documents of an organization. They define the parameters and beliefs of the organization. A full set of statements includes a Mission Statement, Vision Statement, Belief Statement, Purpose Statement, Values Statement and the Business Statement.

Mission Statement:

A mission statement tells us why the business exists and encompasses the scope of the activity that a business will undertake. Knowing why the business exists provides clarity and focus. It explains who we are as a business, what we do as a business and whom we serve.  A Mission Statement defines who are the customers of the business. While it needs to be one sentence long a Mission Statement contains the purpose statement, business statement and the values statement.

•     Apriorian Apologetics works to provide the fallen world with a perfect model of a perfect community based on the rights of dominion and three three pillars of community. 

Vision Statement:

Organizations should have a statement of what they are trying to do and where they are trying to go. The vision statement is said to paint a picture of the ideal future. It paints a picture of the organization’s contribution to society. While the goal may be unobtainable the vision helps to motivate and give direction to those in the organization. A vision statement tells us what is being built.

• Apriorian foresees a future in which perfect communities are common for no longer is there freeloading; parasitism has ended, and social costs are no longer externalized onto society and future generations, there being no taxes, debt, unemployment, inflation, and the need for a secular state is no more. 

Purpose Statement:

The purpose Statement clearly states what an organization seeks to accomplish, why the organization exists and what the ultimate result of the organizations work is. Usually done in two phrases, the first is an infinitive that indicates the change to be performed and the second identifies the problem that will be changed.

Apriorian:

• Builds perfect communities of faith on the three pillars ofcommunity. 
• Overcoming the communities built on fear, risk and exploitation.

Business Statement:

Business Statements give the main methods used by the organization to fulfill its purpose - as given in the purpose statement. Business Statements tell what the organization does to fulfill the goals of the Purpose Statement.

•  Apriorian models perfect community to an imperfect world eradicating parasitism and the risk that comes from the externalization of costs. 

Values Statement:

The values statement is the document that gives the organization its principles or beliefs. These enable the organizations members to pursue the organizations purpose. Actions are to be consistent with our mission to achieve our vision.

• Apriorian values community freed of the impositions of parasites, especially the parasitisms of the state, deleveraged and sustainable and equitable, shorn of social costs and social stratification which are deemed morally reprehensible and rationally indefensible for a people of faith.

Belief Statement: 

        Apriorian believes in:

• Logic
• Markets
• Church
• Charity
• Morality
• Stewardship
• Individuality
• Specialization
• Technology
• Rationalism
• Sustainability
• Justice
• Science
• The right of dominion.
• The Golden Rule
• The Labor Theory of Value
• The Doctrine of Subsidiarity.
• The Infallibility of Scripture
• The sufficiency of faith
• God

Utilitarianism is a philosophy about usefulness. The premise of Utilitarianism is that an action is good or beneficial if it benefits a majority. The original Utilitarian’s stated this principle as the maximization of utility.

However, this can easily become a tyranny of the majority. At the time Utilitarianism were satisfied to support the principles of democracy. Democracy views the majority of the people as the source of all legitimate authority. The majority however have no greater right to authority than an individual.

The aim of Utilitarianism was to generate happiness for the most people. Authority for the majority seemed as if this would mean happiness for the most people. 

Ones actions determines one’s morality. The more one’s actions suited the majority the more moral they were. Kantian ethics however, considered the intent behind the act.

But does the principle of Utilitarianism justify one person being killed to save 5 people who need organ transplants? The problem with this focus on action is that it makes moral choices an issue of the here and now. It would be right to kill one person to save 19 in the short term but what does this do to our soul and to the fabric of society.

Rule utilitarianism attempted to give utilitarianism a longer perspective suggesting we needed to make rules that gave the most people the most happiness over the long term. But happiness is itself an ephemeral term and how to quantify it becomes problematical considering there are different forms of happiness. The happiness life was not lost is of a different quality than the happiness of being chosen to play the lead in a school play.

Are we to assume missing a person whom one intended to kill, is a moral act, because one missed? Missing the shot made more people happy than having hit what one aimed at but failing to harm someone cannot be considered a moral act? 

There is a logical fact we have to recognize before we can even begin to understand the nature of Utilitarianism. If an action is good there must be the possibility of non-good actions, meaning there needs to be a sharp and definable line between these two kinds of actions. Counting heads is not only a dubious way of determining what is good it is technically impossible in most real world situations. No one is going to be able to determine what would make the most people happy except in the most ridiculously extreme kinds of situations.

Abandoning the concept of intent may appear to simplify the problem but only by increasing the invalidity of whatever solution one might suggest.

Morality is not a theory of hapstance. A bee that stings a sharpshooter’s hand as he shoots causing him to miss his mark is not a moral creature and the sting is not a moral act. The intent is missing. 

Intent requires sentience and unless the consequence is what one intended, talking about good or evil in this context is pointless.

There is also a problem with tying morality to what happens to a majority as if one group of people were more valuable than another. The fortuitousness of being of a like-mind with the mass of people hardly means one is moral. Nazi Germany springs to mind as it so often does when speaking about morality and populism.

If morality is to have meaning it must hold out the possibility of there being the moral individual who stands along among his peers. Otherwise we seem to have condemned Jesus himself to an accusation of immorality. He did not, it seem, in his lifetime make a majority of his peers happy. If we are to think of an example of Utilitarian morality think of Pilate, a traditional utilitarian if ever there was one. It was Pilate who asked the crowd if they would be happier if a known murderer was set free or a man in whom he saw no guile. As a traditional Utilitarian he was able to wash his hands of the affair because the people had spoken. No standing his ground and doing what he knew would have been the right thing. There was no moral individual in his eyes. Morality was relative to the happiness the action produced, regardless of the intent behind the action anticipated.

No Christian can view this trial as anything other than what it was, the greatest travesty of justice ever committed.

For an action or outcome to be seen as being useful we need to comprehend what useful means. It cannot be supposed that we exist just to make others or ourselves happy. There is no way to proof humans deserve happiness or have a right to happiness or even that happiness is a First Order Principle. The biggest mistake made was in trying to link utility with happiness. It was a project doomed to failure.

To be useful an action has to create value. Value is scalable according to the context in which it is created.

Humans can and do create value on the global scale, but a more appropriate scale is the local level, the cell or social network level, the level at which most people function and the level on which most value is created.

Value can be given an economic value. We can ascertain the value of a business or community or nation and determine if the Balance Sheet for that entity has been added to or reduced in value.

The purpose of mankind is to add value to our communities and thus an action has utility and moral value if and when it adds value to the Balance Sheet of a community or group.

Exchanges are a way to ensure accountability exists. Unless we know the specific costs a person or account creates or consumes, we cannot know if an individual is being responsible for the costs he or she creates or not.

We reject state intervention simply because governments actions are not accountable in the way the actions of individuals are.

Dominions are organizations composed of free citizens united by an adherence to the right of dominion and a commitment to the principle of subsidiarity. 

The free market is said to be the most powerful social technology available to humankind, yet it has not solved the problem of unemployment, debt or inflation. It still perpetuates waste. No market can be free if the people are not free.

Money is considered to be one of the greatest of human innovations, yet no one knows how to issue currency in the quantity needed without creating debt and inflation. No market can be free until money can be issued without dislocating the mechanisms of the market through debt and inflation.

The power of the free market is said to be its reliance on the invisible hand. This power is vested in a free people. The invisible hand of the free market is visible to financiers and the state because they control the currency and through this, they control the people. Being able to control the market is euphemistically called making money work for you.

Despite the assurances the market will sort things out on its own it is not on its own if those who use it are in ideological chains. The market cannot fix things when property is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and the citizen is not free of the machinations of the rich.

If the invisible hand was as powerful as its supporters say, why has it not achieved autonomy from the state and the money managers of the economy? Obviously, the invisible hand has been purchased and enslaved along with the citizenry.

If the most efficient business is the one without government regulations, why have not governments been made redundant by the operation of efficient private enterprise businesses operating in a free market? 

Regardless of the theoretical claims made it is difficult to imagine capitalism existing without the state. Government is needed, not so much to regulate business operations, but to restrain those who would tar and feather capitalists and run them out of town on a rail, if permitted. 

Unions were not developed as a way to protect the sanctity of free enterprise. It is difficult to imagine 5000 sturdy workmen taking abuse from a portly entrepreneur, based on the assurance that an untrammeled private enterprise system produces the best possible outcome. Private enterprise exists only because the public sector protects it at the public's expense.

Adam Smith noted that businessmen never come together without the conversation turning to methods of circumventing regulations and the market, such impulses are also part of labors makeup. We have created a system at war with itself that needs a regulatory state, despite its known drawbacks.

 Dominion Exchanges are formed by people who come together to defend their rights of dominion, the right to what they create and to oppose any claim to their property by the state or its allies. Dominion Exchanges are composed of between 3 and 15 persons. Any product or service provided by the market or state can be provided by an Exchange. Public goods such as policing, and health care and education can be provided with the same facility conventional goods and services have been by the market. 

An Exchange can be set up and registered as a not-for-profit corporation. Registering the Exchange as a not-for-profit will reduce issues that might occur with the state as we carry on increasing the degree of separation between church and state. 

Every member of the Exchange has one voting share. Common Shares allow the member to vote in elections and on policy initiatives and for the chairperson. Common shares entitle each member to a share of the assets of the organization were it ever dissolved. However, Exchanges are never sold or liquidated. The assets of an Exchange can be transferred to a different sector, but Exchanges never become non-viable in the way private business do.

The Exchange issues Preferred Shares as a currency. Preferred Shares represent the equity of the Exchange and are issued based on the value created by labor. Thus, the currency is always fully backed by the equity of the Exchange and never generates inflation. Nor do Exchanges produce or use interest bearing debt.

Exchanges are built around the goods and services the members provide. Exchanges are set up and expand by market mechanisms. There are no administrative pathways to wealth accumulation or to the centralization of power, in an Exchange.

Capitalist enterprises may claim to be making a profit when in fact liabilities are being externalized. Double entry bookkeeping permits the formation and externalization of liabilities and debt. Perhaps a lawsuit has been levied against the corporation, or an employee has information that will bring the company down. No company measures the pollution they create or adds this cost to the price of their products. But these are real costs.

Exchanges are created ad hoc as needed by the transfer of assets using the mechanisms of the market. 

Contributors allocate assets to the Exchange. Payment for transfers is by preferred shares being deposited in the investor’s capital account. Equity in the Exchange is exchanged for assets transferred to the Exchange. Equity is a financial vehicle used to express value. A piece of equipment sold to the Exchange for $500.00 represents $500.00 worth of equity.

Equity is represented by preferred shares. An Exchange that receives an asset valued at $500.00 is able to issue 500 preferred shares valued at $1.00 each. Preferred shares can be exchanged for goods and services because they are issued in denominations the way conventional currency is. Preferred shares are a fully backed currency and used as a unit of exchange in all economic transactions.

Christians are required to divest themselves of personal wealth and yet they are required to be doers of good works. This includes caring for their families. The only way these parameters can be satisfied is by means of an Exchange. Personal property required for the care of oneself and one’s family is not the issue here. What is on the table is capital or commercial assets. All surplus goods and what is understood as capital, is transferred to the accounts of the Exchange, in exchange for equity in the Exchange. 

The easiest and best way to divest oneself of assets not needed for personal use, is by transferring ownership of these to the accounts of an Exchange in return for preferred shares.

There is no benefit for an Exchange to create social costs. The agent creating the cost is the same agent that will ultimately pay the cost.

Exchange inputs equal outputs. A market is a closed system. The focus of the Exchange is always local. The integrity of the local market is paramount.

It makes no sense to create a shoddy product or service when this will be used by a member of the same organization. If one department needs a piece of equipment, it makes no sense for the manufacturing arm of the parent company, to produce a machine that  does not work as it ought and suffers multiple breakdowns. This holds true for Exchanges. Business activity is similar to in-house transfers within a conventional business.

Social costs are what businesses call externalized costs. These are costs created by the production process but not contained in the price of the products or services sold, thus the uncovered cost accrues to the account of society and future generations. This only makes sense if the accounts can be kept separate. Exchanges prevent costs from being externalized onto society and future generations because no one can transfer costs onto a free citizen.

To top of page